Propeller Availability

Hard to miss that QuickStarts are out of stock with promised availability on 4/19, and I just bought the last of the Propeller Minis today (six, I didn't act quick enough because I could have gotten 7 yesterday). What's the situation? We are using both of these products as the basis of somewhat critical industrial control modules. We don't need a lot of them or often, but sometimes we do need them kind of soon.

"When you make a thing, a thing that is new, it is so complicated making it that it is bound to be ugly. But those that make it after you, they don’t have to worry about making it. And they can make it pretty, and so everybody can like it when others make it after you."

Great news, Ken. I anticipate using more QuickStarts and Minis in new designs due to a realignment in the other stuff available to me. This lot will be positioning the filling lance for some drumfillers. You know, it would be really cool if we could get something about the size of the Mini that had some way of getting the rest of the I/O broken out, even if that required some kind of non-breadboard compatible funky header or patch cable. These will be controlling 16 opto-22's, a bidirectional serial interface to the mothership, and a status LED. Here in Louisiana we call the status LED lagniappe.

localroger: There are other options for small boards, see this thread, but unfortunately, I think the Propeller Mini is the only one that is readily available. The new flip module will be good once it is released, but I haven't seen a date set.

V2 of my M44D40+ would be perfect, but I haven't sent the design to fab yet. It adds µSD, 5v LDO, 3.3v LDO, and DC jack/Power Terminal. Since I still have about 400 fabs left for V1 of my M44D40+, I also thought of just making an add-on board that provides the extras and some additional connectivity options, but it has been low priority for me.

I have tried searching both the forums and the home site but I can't find any information on the FLIP module. Sounds potentially useful, but being 40-pin might have been a problem with this design because it's straddling the 40 pin header connector at the end of a 16-module OPTO-22 breakout board, replacing the IIC interface of the old PCF8574 based daughterboard. Fortunately I have just enough I/O for this application on the Mini.

Some of my older website links are broken, caused by me reworking my website with Wordpress while keeping the old site online. Just go to the home page clusos.com and you will find my P8XBLADE2 listed.